Chapter 16
Breakfast at Kelton was a glittering performance—silver steaming, firelight glancing off glass, and a dozen careful smiles that never quite reached the eyes.
The scent of cloves and hot chocolate hung thick in the air.
A bough of evergreen sagged under its weight of frost near the window, dripping steadily into a waiting bowl.
Elizabeth entered on her aunt’s arm, determined not to shrink. She would not hide behind the Gardiners like some errant schoolgirl. Her gown was plain muslin trimmed with blue ribbon, more modest than fashionable, but she carried her head high. If the ladies meant to stare, let them.
Lady Wilcox was the first to pounce, her cheer bright enough to burn.“Miss Bennet! You look quite restored this morning. The storm seems to agree with you.”
Elizabeth smiled. “Then I am singular in my good fortune. If confinement improves the complexion, I shall open a shop and sell the cure by the ounce.”
A few genteel laughs followed—the nervous sort that tested the room before daring to sound sincere. China rattled. A spoon scraped. Miss Hinton leaned to her sister and whispered something that made both their shoulders tremble.
Elizabeth pretended not to notice. She took her place midway down the table, poured her aunt’s chocolate, and fixed her gaze on the snow beyond the windows. It was easier to face the storm outside than the one coiled behind her back.
She could almost convince herself she’d weathered the worst of it—until boots rang briskly across the floor.
Colonel Fitzwilliam, all cheer and cold air, appeared between the footmen with a tray of sweet rolls in hand. “Ah! Providence smiles upon me. Miss Bennet, I have searched this room and found the last empty chair—and fortune places it beside you.”
The ladies stirred to make room, their amusement thin but visible. Elizabeth forced a smile. “Providence is very partial to you this morning, Colonel.”
“Only because I’ve been singing your praises.
” He dropped into the chair beside her, the scent of frost still clinging to his coat.
“Your reading the other night—why, I have not the heart of a poet nor the head of a scholar, so know that the compliment is a true one. Even those of us who could not follow the poetry insisted your voice alone was worth the listening.”
Laughter rippled—milder, genuine. Elizabeth inclined her head. “Then I am doubly honoured, for it seems I have pleased both the learned and the deaf.”
“Indeed,” the colonel said, reaching for the chocolate pot, “I told Darcy you might replace the vicar if the snow keeps us past Twelfth Night.”
The name fell into the room like a spark onto tinder.
China stilled. The air shifted. Elizabeth felt it before she understood why. Darcy’s name carried weight—too much—and the sudden hush told her everyone had heard it.
Her cup trembled faintly in its saucer. “Mr. Darcy’s opinion,” she managed, “is hardly needed in that regard. I daresay he has heard enough sermons to last him a lifetime.”
The polite laughter that followed sounded brittle to her ears. Miss Hinton’s fan opened with a snap, stirring the air as if to scatter the tension. Elizabeth wished it could. Her pulse pounded in her wrists.
The colonel, oblivious, chuckled. “True enough. Heaven forbid we let him preach—he’d speak once and the congregation would freeze solid.”
That earned another wave of laughter, uneven but grateful. Elizabeth joined it too eagerly, the sound too high. She could feel her composure fraying, could almost see it, like ice under strain.
And then she felt him.
Darcy had entered quietly, taking a newly vacated seat two chairs away.
He must have heard every word. His coat still glistened faintly from the cold, his expression rigid.
He poured himself a cup of chocolate as if nothing at all had been said, and yet she knew he had heard—because when her eyes flickered his way, his were already waiting.
The gaze held only a breath, but the heat of it reached her across the clatter and laughter. She looked down, heart thudding, and fixed her attention on her spoon.
“Miss Bennet,” Mrs. Barlow’s voice cut through, brittle and sweet, “you must try the preserves. Lady Montford’s cook makes them from a French receipt—I dare say they rival anything in London.”
A few heads turned. The word London landed like a test.
Elizabeth smiled faintly, careful and cool. “Then we are fortunate, Mrs. Barlow. I should hate to think we are missing any of London’s refinements while trapped in the snow.”
More laughter. Safer now. But her pulse refused to steady.
She lifted her cup again, her hands too hot against the china, and caught sight of Darcy across the table. His jaw was set, his gaze fixed not on her but on Mrs. Barlow—a warning in his stillness. The other woman faltered mid-sip and turned her eyes away.
Elizabeth’s breath caught. He had defended her without a word, and the knowledge unsettled her more than the insult had.
The colonel, trying to reclaim the mood, launched into a story about Christmas in Portugal—soldiers carolling with more noise than harmony. The ladies tittered, grateful for the change. Elizabeth smiled where she should, but her gaze drifted again toward Darcy.
He was not looking now. But she could feel the line of awareness between them like a taut thread stretched across the table.
Her aunt’s gentle voice beside her was the only thing that broke it. “My dear, will you see if they might send a little more tea? I find the chocolate too sweet.”
“Of course,” Elizabeth murmured, grateful for the errand. She rose carefully, every motion tightly reined.
The colonel made a show of standing to let her pass, knocking his chair against the leg of the table in the process. Laughter rose again; Elizabeth managed a smile and slipped between the chairs.
As she passed the sideboard, she felt it—that quick pull in her chest—and glanced back. Darcy had risen too. He stood as though to speak, one hand half-raised, but she was already beyond him.
Their eyes met across the distance: a glance, a heartbeat, and then the crowd swallowed them both.
Darcy had escaped breakfast as soon as civility allowed.
The laughter there, the brittle ease of those who thought themselves charitable, scraped against his nerves like sand.
He had watched Elizabeth move through the room with that impossible composure, her smile unshaken, her colour steady.
No one but he would have seen how her hands trembled when she set down her cup.
He could not think of her trembling without fury.
He needed an outlet for it. Something that would do good, not merely feel it.
The grooms were clearing snow from the walk; the smell of pine and smoke followed him down the stair to the great hall, where Lady Montford stood directing the placement of more mistletoe and holly.
Candied oranges, paper stars, gilt apples—every bough shimmered.
Elizabeth was there too, her shawl slipping as she leaned to help one of the maids.
The sight both steadied and unsettled him. She could have gone into hiding. No one would have blamed her. But not his Elizabeth. No, she stared them down, dared them to actually voice their venom and expose themselves.
Richard appeared from a side passage, already laughing with two of the younger ladies, his arms full of ribbons. “Darcy! Come lend your judgment. The ladies insist the star must be twice this size, and Monty’s paper is not large enough for the task.”
Darcy inclined his head. “Then they must have cloth. Gold, if there is any.”
Lady Montford looked up, startled by his tone but quick to seize on his authority. “Indeed—Mrs. Fenton, tell the housekeeper to search the stores. Perhaps some remnant of silk from last year’s table dressings.”
Darcy’s eyes caught on the heap of trimmings at the maid’s feet. Among the scraps of gold and paper gleamed a strip of deep green satin—the shade he knew as surely as his own name.For a breath, he could not move. The colour struck him like a blow.
He bent at once, pretending to study the pile, but his pulse had leapt into his throat. When his fingers brushed the frayed edge, a chill ran through him. It was his ribbon—her ribbon—lying there like some common trimming for the servants to cut and scatter.
Impossible! His hand went to his breast pocket. Surely, the real ribbon was still…
But no, the place under his handkerchief, where her ribbon had lain over his heart, was empty.
How had it tugged free? How long had it been loose? A day? More? Anyone might have seen it, touched it, wondered at it. The thought turned his stomach. That it should have slipped from his keeping—left to be trampled beneath their holiday finery—was unthinkable.
He closed his hand over it, folding it into his palm as if to hide his own folly. The silk was warm from the fire, impossibly soft. For a moment, he could not breathe for the fear of what it meant—that even this last token might desert him.
He straightened before anyone could notice, the ribbon already secreted in his pocket once more, its loss leaving his pulse unsteady and his composure in shreds.
“Green will not do for a star,” Lady Montford declared over her shoulder.
“No,” he said quietly, tucking it away. “But it will serve another purpose.”
Richard grinned. “A secret project? Shall we have more ornaments before nightfall?”
“Something of that nature.”
The air in the hall shimmered with chatter—the rustle of silk, the hiss of candle wicks, the bright clink of laughter that grated like glass. Everywhere he looked, people were pretending at festivity while the gossip still festered beneath it.
He wanted to blot it out. To replace it with something—anything—honourable.
Lady Montford turned toward him again, still directing the servants. “Well, if my green star will not do, then you gentlemen must invent some new amusement, or the company will devour itself by Christmas.”